Cereal mascots

Today’s One Big Happy, with the kids’ grandparents at breakfast, contemplating the cereals on offer, with some dismay:

(#1)

It’s a tribute to the saturation of television advertising that a great many Americans could identify the five breakfast cereals alluded to via their commercial mascots here:

the jolly vampire: Count Chocula

the annoying talking bird: surely meant to be Toucan Sam for Froot Loops; but it could also be Sonny the Cuckoo Bird for Cocoa Puffs (Sonny’s “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”)

the mentally challenged rabbit: the Trix Rabbit

the cute li’l Neanderthal kids: Flintstone Kids for Pebbles

the chubby old sea captain: Cap’n Crunch

I recognized them all immediately, but then I’ve posted about all of them (in connection with their being sugar bombs) except Count Chocula (and I will remedy that omission below) — though I’ve never eaten any of them.

These are all cereals advertised to kids, with menorable mascots and an astounding amount of sugar in them. I’ve also posted (here) on the (sugary) cereals Quisp and Quake and their mascots. And there are more sugary cereals: Lucky Charms, with a leprechaun mascot (the cereal reported to be 41% sugar by weight, here); (Post) Golden Crisp, with Sugar Bear as the mascot (52%); Honey Smacks, with Dig’em Frog as a mascot (56%); Frosted Flakes, with Tony the Tiger (”They’re gr-r-reat!”) as mascot; and Honey Graham Oh’s, with a honey image rather than a mascot.

The General Mills Corporation’s Monster Cereals monster-themed breakfast cereals, officially referred to collectively as the Monster Cereals, are five current, and formerly distributed, breakfast cereal brands in North America. The series includes Count Chocula [chocolate flavored, Franken Berry [strawberry flavored], and Boo-Berry [blueberry flavored], in addition to the long-discontinued, but temporarily resurrected, Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy.

(#2)

In the cartoon (#1), the grandfather wonders whether they have any adult cereal in the house. Possibly not, with the grandkids around. But there are huge numbers of breakfast cereals with very low sugar: many from smaller companies, but some fr0m from the big ones: (General Mills) Kix, (General Mills) Cheerios, (Quaker) Life, (Kellogg’s) Rice Krispies, (Kellogg’s) Corn Flakes. (Rice Krispies even have cute mascots: the trio Snap, Crackle, and Pop.)

But we might worry about a call for adult cereals, thanks to this usage of adult:

[from NOAD2] sexually explicit or pornographic (used euphemistically to refer to a movie, book, or magazine)

The euphemistic usage tends to drive out the literal meaning ‘grownup, mature’, which is what the grandfather has in mind.

But that fact inspired me to wonder whether there were any sexually suggestive breakfast cereals, and of course there are (and people have been inspired to create more, with vaginal, mammary, or phallic symbols). From the world of real breakfast cereals, we have Honey Smacks: not only are they loaded with sugar (as noted above), they are also vaginal in form (though the makers’ intent was clearly to suggest lips (as in lip-smacking good cereal), rather than labia:

(#3)

And then there’s Honey Stars, with a space explorer theme; the individual cereal pieces were originally just stars, but then (inevitably phallic) rockets were added:

(#4)

Penis and testicles. The mascot is a cute bear in a space suit. (This appears to be the Indonesian product —bentuk roket ‘rocket form’ in Bahasa Indonesia.) Other shape offerings are moons and what are labeled as galaxies: